Abstract: Can women truly “have it all” — an ambitious and lucrative career, partner, and children — or are trade-offs inevitable? I examine this question among patent inventors, a group characterized by a stark underrepresentation of women, using patent records linked to Finnish register data and a matched-control event-study design. I find that the monetary returns to inventors are broadly similar across genders in absolute terms, and even larger for women in relative terms. Yet, the family-related costs of inventor careers fall disproportionately on women, taking the form of delayed childbearing, a long-lasting gap in cumulative fertility, and a substantial decline in inventive productivity after childbirth. Male inventors show no evidence of such tension between parenthood and career. My findings indicate that steeper career–family trade-offs, rather than weaker financial incentives, help explain women’s underrepresentation in innovation.

Abstract:  Only a small fraction of inventors are women. Using Finnish administrative data linked to patent records, I show that educational and occupational sorting explain roughly half of the gender gap in patenting. The remaining half arises because women patent less than men in nearly all occupations, even after controlling for education, high school grades, and employer firm. Career effects of parenthood are a key mechanism: using a matched-control event-study design, I find that mothers’ annual patenting rates decline by 78% after their first childbirth, with partial long-term recovery, whereas fathers’ patenting rates increase persistently by roughly 10%.

Abstract: This paper examines how innovation affects firm survival, scale, productivity, and market position by comparing first-time patenting firms to otherwise similar firms that never patent. We further distinguish between granted and rejected patent applications to separate the returns to innovation from those attributable specifically to patent approval. Firms with granted patents exhibit substantially lower exit rates, roughly 15 percentage points lower than unsuccessful applicants, indicating large extensive-margin effects. Beyond survival, granted patents are associated with pronounced intensive-margin responses: firm scale, measured by revenue, value added, and wage bills, is approximately 25-30 log points larger. Firms with rejected patent applications also grow faster than non-patenting peers. In contrast, we find no systematic effects on firm productivity or the capital-labor mix, suggesting that post-innovation growth is driven by the expansion of existing activities. Finally, we document significant gains in industry-level market shares among successfully patenting firms.

• "Osaajia hyödyntävät nuoret yritykset versovat innovaatioita" - with Mika Maliranta, Ari Hyytinen, Eero Nurmi, and Otto Toivanen; Talous ja Yhteiskunta 3/2025